Did I step over the edge?

So, were you at the annual meeting? Did I scare you off?

I stepped down from the lecturn, sat down, and thought I'd perhaps gone over the edge. Perhaps I need to make things clear; I'm not sure I was really understood. Let me try again.

Let's talk about what it means to be "formed" a Christian. That's right; we aren't born Christians. We make choices. And, we form ourselves as Christians, like a potter who forms a vase from a hunk of clay. What does it mean? What do we need to do? What actions do we take, like the potter wetting the hunk of clay and spinning the potter's wheel?

I suggest that stewardship is a key way we form ourselves as Christians. We define stewardship as taking care of, being responsible for, that which has been entrusted to us: our time, our talents, and our treasures.

And, I suggested, that one of the ways we use our time is through corporate worship. I'm not talking about coming to worship two or three times a year. A cynic would suggest this past Sunday there were members of the congregation who had darkened the doors last this past Easter... and Christmas before that. Actually, a cynic would say there were people who came for the meeting and didn't even bother coming to the worship service.

That, my friends, is not a good use of our time. We are asked to participate in the corporate life, the corporate worship, of our church on a regular basis (and by regular I mean weekly, or at least nearly so). And that's just the first stewardship of our time.

Anyway, an interesting thing about this is this: when we talk about forming ourselves as Christians, we're talking about Christian Formation.

More to follow.